Now Be Thankful
by infiniteviking
Summary: Perhaps it doesn't have to take a disaster to make Harry host Thanksgiving dinner. Lighthearted introspection on Things That Go Bump, with hints of future HarryMurphy.


This started out as a lighthearted holiday piece and became an exploration of certain dramatic possibilities in "Things That Go Bump". It was meant to be posted on Thanksgiving, but the last few paragraphs simply wouldn't cooperate until today. Happy New Year!

**Now Be Thankful**

When the fire is grown too fierce to breathe,

In burning embers I'll be bound….

--_Fairport Convention_

"You didn't have Thanksgiving in England, did you, Bob?"

"No." Raising his brows, Bob strolled through the table, the better to watch Harry scurrying around with the knives and forks and plates. "You don't either, as I can recall."

"Hey. That's because my uncle was a loser who didn't know gratitude from a hole in the head. Oh, no, no, no -- that better not be the sauce--" Running his hands through his hair, Harry bolted for the kitchen, where various things were bubbling (and in one case, bubbling over) on the stovetop.

Bob, appearing beside him so abruptly that he nearly spilled the closest pot, cast a critical eye over the proceedings and slid a ghostly hand through the saucepan to test the contents. "A lighter flame here would perhaps be beneficial. You know, I scarcely need mention that you could have ordered everything in the first place."

"Too expensive, Bob." Waving the smoke away, Harry lowered the heat and picked up the dripping pot to let it cool down. "Anyway, they're lucky I'm not making the pie."

"I was wondering."

"Georgia. Billy's friend, remember?" Mopping at the scorched liquid with a worn cloth, Harry kept his eyes averted, apparently focusing his full attention on the dire chore that was Thanksgiving dinner. "She said she'd bring one over."

"After you asked him."

"Yeah, I might've kinda mentioned it."

"As I was saying." Unfazed by Harry's swift exit from the room, Bob simply appeared next to him again, dodging with the ease of long practice as Harry remembered something else, turned away from the table, and nearly walked through him. "Even during the last five years, I've never noticed you pay any particular attention to these traditions -- but you're putting a lot of thought into them now."

"Yeah, well." Shrugging, Harry smiled a bit self-consciously. He'd never really gotten into Thanksgiving. It was ultimately a time to be with your family; there was nobody alive with whom he'd wanted to share such a charged holiday, and he had doubted that Bob could care less about a bunch of pilgrims and a turkey. Even the football had passed him by.

He blew out a breath in frustration. Napkins: there should be napkins. Always be ready to clean up the mess.

"It's Murphy, you know?" he muttered. "She's got a daughter. She needs a Thanksgiving."

"Then the third chair is for--"

"Anna, yes." Harry stopped in the kitchen doorway, rubbing a weary hand over his face. Brown-haired Anna, streaked with soot, staring with wide eyes from the safety of her mother's arms as something in the burning building seemed to shriek. "God, she'd better not turn out to be one of those snippy little princess brats who'll dust her chair for germs or something."

"Raised by Murphy..." noted Bob, not unsympathetically. "How bad can she be?"

Harry waved the question off. Kids had always taken to him. It would be just his luck if Anna Murphy was the exception. "She's a cute kid, though, from the little I saw of her. I wonder if she did really give Murph that necklace." Pausing at Bob's curious look, he grinned, remembering how he had twitted Murphy about her wardrobe only a few days before... which reminded him that he should really do something about the couch in the front room. He headed for the hallway, talking over his shoulder. "You know, that one necklace she wears all the time. She said her daughter gave it to her, but that wasn't her, it was -- well, you know."

"And such was the origin of all your troubles." The dracoform's uncanny knowledge of Murphy's habits and personality had been cleared up when research revealed that shapeshifting dragons could read minds. Shifting into the hall with a thought, Bob watched Harry rummage through the linens for a clean blanket to drape over the ancient couch.

"Now that you do have the time--" he paused for Harry's derisive chortle and then continued with practiced aplomb -- "why don't you tell me what did happen after the roof fell in?"

"Well, that was it, Bob. The thing was trapped in the house. Game over."

"Harry." Bob shook his head. "I know perfectly well that wouldn't have been enough to stop a dragon."

Harry, his hands full of fabric, turned away from the closet, looking everywhere but at Bob's face. "All right," he muttered. "I bound it to the flames with Tirnon's Insubstantial Knife. It ripped itself apart."

Bob took a sharp breath, his face drawn with horror. Not because the magic was so close to the Black -- worse things were justified in the name of self-defense. In all truth, he had half known it would be something like this. The binding ritual would have required the dragon to be almost close enough to touch.

"You went into the house," he said accusingly.

"See? That's why I didn't bother you about it. I got out, no harm done, okay?"

"Don't tell me," the ghost grumbled, following him into the front room. "The child was trapped in there. I don't like her already."

"The cops weren't there yet and Murphy was still out for the count. You know I couldn't leave her in there."

After a moment's hesitation, Bob nodded curtly. A man who would leave a small child to burn would not be Harry Dresden.

"Morgan was on my tail about it all day afterwards. But he was the one who didn't bother to mention that the drake's girlfriend was liable to get nasty on us." Flipping the blanket over the couch with his father's unconscious artistry, Harry rolled his eyes. "The High Council wanted to take it alive -- talk with it -- _reason_ with it--"

"Oh, that'd have gone over well," murmured Bob.

"I found them at the house, waiting for Murphy. But they were too late. This time it was one of them." It had thrown Morgan through the window before shifting into its true shape, thirty feet of leather and claws and paralyzing orange eyes, and Harry's hand had felt like it was going to melt off as he threw all of his power into shielding himself and the unconscious child from the flames. It was pure luck that the brimstone and melted glass could stand for three of the elements, and that his spur-of-the-moment spellwork hadn't been premeditated enough to catch the dragon's attention.

"The funny thing was, Murphy and Anna -- they didn't see a thing. Guessed plenty, I mean, hey, green fire... but you know, been there and done that. So really, the whole Murphy's-house-nearly-burning-down? Was all Morgan's fault, for picking my place to hide Mai and being careless enough to let that thing read his mind and get here first."

"Obviously," said Bob dryly. "Perhaps he should foot the bill for tonight's spread."

With a snort of laughter, Harry went back in to check the turkey. It was nearly ready, and if Murphy arrived early, she could decide whether to take charge or watch him and laugh. It was a win either way.

"I still wonder why you couldn't have achieved the same goal without all the hassle." Bob had appeared at his side again, unwilling to take no -- or even an epic tale of dragon-slaying under fearsome pressure -- for an answer. "You could have brought them to a restaurant, to a hotel--"

Harry held up a hand. He had wondered the same thing himself, especially when he had to look up an expansion spell with greasy fingers because the bird was just barely too big for the oven, but there was really only one answer.

"I want them to know they have a place."

He gestured helplessly, as though trying to pluck words out of the air, or seeking something elusive and bright that hovered under his dingy roof, just visible to those who might see. "Not just for Thanksgiving, not just because her roof fell in or the thing that did it was from my side of the fence. All the time. Anytime -- they can come here."

Bob's pale eyes softened with acknowledgment and approval. Nodding serenely, he turned to descend into the hidden laboratory so that Murphy and her child might not be bothered with unexpected evidence of the supernatural, but Harry's voice held him back.

"There's one thing more. When they get here and we all sit down, I don't do this so often, but I'm gonna say grace. And I want you to listen."

Startled, Bob turned to face him again. "From the lab?"

"Anywhere you want -- I know you can do invisible. Somewhere in here with us."

"Harry," said Bob, his voice wavering very slightly, "this holiday is making you sentimental."

"Maybe." With a wave of his hand, Harry encompassed the room: bookcases packed but tidy for once, desks and shelves orderly despite their clutter, the usual dozens of candles glowing in their holders, obscurely potent herbs spilling out of the hollowed gourd in the middle of the table – the usual craziness that didn't often look this much like a home. "..Yeah," he admitted, his throat dry. "Whatever this is... maybe it's not time to introduce her to the family yet, but whatever this is becoming, you're part of it too. And I want to know you're there."

It was the most he had said on the subject since the previous week's peril, when Bob had walked into darkness and been lucky to extricate himself from the dead. The ghost faltered, searching for a response, and then they both broke into rather silly smiles, neither quite able to look the other in the eye.

Which was why the sudden rattling at the back door took them completely by surprise.

They turned as one, acutely aware that it was far too late for Bob to retreat through the nearest wall. Murphy was knocking at the glass, looking not so bad for a woman who must have spent the day dealing with contractors and insurance agents, a shopping bag suspended from one arm and Anna wide-eyed and curious at her side; and she caught Harry's eye and gave him a little wave and a questioning expression, as if to say _Who's your friend_?

Squaring his shoulders, Harry chuckled as he realized Bob had mirrored the movement. "Well," he murmured. The lab, the backup plans and all their carefully tested subterfuges, were no longer called for.

He rubbed the nervousness out of his hands and grinned, beckoning Bob toward the door. "Maybe it is time, at that. Come on... let's get this thing on the road."

-----


End file.
